- Location
- The Pagoda of Masks
Apropos of nothing, my 11:30pm thought of the day is that any Infernal running on Cecelyne charms becomes a Fairy Godfather - in the "make him an offer he can't refuse" style.
General Exalted Thread
I think its easy to confuse grounded with gritty; after all there's that blurb despite all their might IRRC goes something like "Even in these times of tumult, the Wyld hunt still rides and arrow may still slay a Exalt", I'd like to imagine in terms of feel, combat in Exalted kind of feels like Dark Souls where despite the PC slaying gods and terrifying monsters, edge between victory and defeat can often be a thin one, and it is the marked of the skilled to turn those inches to victory.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Okay then; laying down critique and suggestions on this one before I post Mehve or Dreadnought-class broadsword.
First of all, there is basically no reason to have such a high capacity or cost; take the capacity down to 5, and make the cost 1 and you get the same result. I'd change the Charge to "1m if the knife deals at least a single point of lethal damage to a target", which gives it a hard cap on how much it can generate at a time.
First of all, what happens if you fail the roll? What happens if the patient uses damage-resisting Charms? What happens if he has that physical attribute at 5 already? Does the Training effect have a cap? How long does a scarring session take? Can the knife be used in combat? Do the scars have any permanent effects.
Again, I would change this to give it a hard cap on motes acquired per attack/damage infliction.
Around level 3, probably.
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azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
There's no exception, so the cap should default to whatever the character's normal cap is.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
Time Stop is bullshit in almost every setting.
In Exalted, it means you can use your strongest insta kill attacks (or just high damage high splatter attacks), and kill your opponent dead without them having a chance to react.
Even a 4-5 second Time Stop is enough to kill a PC before they can do anything. (See: DIO vs Kakyoin.)
That depends, if you can't effect or can't directly effect anything during it then not that powerful, but it you can directly effect things and people then no way in hell.
In 2E, yes, which drew from a wider literary tradition.
The assertion that was being made earlier was that those were 2Eisms, and that Grabowski's original vision of 1E was a grittier, sand and sandals type place, something that's easily disproven by simply looking at the claimed references.
1E's suggested literary resources were Night's Master by Tanith Lee, Hawkmoon by Micheal Moorcock, Resurrection Man, Night Watch and Galveston by Sean Stewart, The Black Company by Glen Cook, The Complete Pegana by Lord Dunsany, Shadow and Claw and Sword and Citadel by Gene Wolfe, The Histories by Herodotus, The Iliad by Homer, and The Volsungasaga.
Movie resources were Ninja Scroll(1995,anime), Swordsman II with Jet Li and Brigitte Lin, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon with Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh, Streetfighter(1996, anime), Grave of the Fireflies(1988,anime)
Other media was Final Fantasy 7(Squaresoft) and Thief(Looking Glass Studios).
All of these are referred to as inspirations for elements of the setting, except Grave of the Fireflies which is included for it's depiction of serious storytelling in an anime format.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Also worth noting, it's a cosmic lottery that you have to buy a ticket for with awesome, or at the very least the intent to do awesome, which is further evidence that the Exalted will tend to be people who are pretty hot shit at the whole Not Dying thing.
- Location
- The Pagoda of Masks
Time Stopping is just the flavor of a stunt.
Quxin Star-Eyes draws back the string on her Stearmetal Powerbow Quixotic Justice and between one heartbeat and the next, the stars ceasing the eternal dance for a moment and in that eternal moment she strikes. Loosing first her arrow and then the echo of her arrow and then the echo of the echo of her arrow and so forth - unleashing a withering torrent of Ill Intent that shrieks through the air as time resumes it's endless march by Heaven's decree.
That's just a Archery attack with a full excellency, doesn't even need a multiple attack charm.
- Location
- Spain
You could do it as a shaping effect. So, like, not really that powerful after all.
Basically anybody that that matters would be inmune.
This works too.
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- Location
- Spain
Oh, hey, i found an even better description of Exalted ADN:
Grabowski said:Anyway, I felt there was a clear line of inspiration that ran like this:
And that I could steal from basically every point along those trails, and as
long as I didn't try to emphasize mututally contradictory elements. People
who hate Ninja Scroll but think Red Blades of Black Cathay is elevated
entertainment, or who find the Ramayana thrilling while dismissing Final
Fantasy as overpowered crap often pick part of the tree and use those
elements exclusively. I generally find the differences illusionary -- I don't
really see very much space between Cloud Strife's sword and the ox-goad
of Shamgar of Anath, other than one being more legitimate in the eyes
of the person doing the imagining, which is what matters, but I like to
steal omnivorously.
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Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
I actually wrote a time stop effect for Exalted. Well, I say 'wrote', I edited an old Charm by EarthScorpion, polished it up and gave it a spitshine for TAW Revised.
Ah, here we go;
Ah, here we go;
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
This intersects with one of my observations on why Exalts matter so much - the relatively easy access to Shaping defenses.
Against a lot of opponents, things like raksha nobles and 2CDs can utterly dominate by just invoking a Shaping effect to kill/brainwash/send their enemies into the cornfield. Meanwhile, Exalts can force those beings to actually pay attention and invest some level of effort in fighting them.
Sure, perfect defenses and excellencies also count, but those two things are also available to gods, demons, and elementals in some format or another - the big uniting factor that makes Exalts Matter is their ability to shrug off Shaping effects.
As far as I can tell, anyway.
AmineHsu
A worm, not a man, scorned and despised.
- Location
- NoVA
There used to be one, then it
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
Ah, this was actually done for a reason. By having the effect cost more than one session would I wanted to incentive either giving your elite fighters - those you would be using this for - lots of scarification, which comes with its risks of death from infection or bleeding out as you are doing it multiple times; doing this to more than just your fighters, but only using your effect on your elites, meaning there is more general risk of death, but not among the elites; or the third option of just killing captured prisoners and using that to do multiple of your elites (as if you have "fully charged" it, so to say, you only loose one mote per session.
Good points.
So, new and improved:
The Silver Scoring Knife( Artefact 3)
Cost: 2m
Aspect: Lunar; Capacity: 10m; Charge: 1m everytime it inflicts lethal damage
This moonsilver knife is based off those that some Western cultures used for ritualistic scarring, with a wide flat blade. The owner of this knife can use it to cut flowing patterns over a patients chakras, causing wounds that close in silvery, gleaming, scars by making a Dex+(either Linguistics or Craft(Air)) check at Difficulty two, which deals three unsoakable lhl and takes one hour. Failing the check results in the tearing of the patients chakras, causing the damage to become disabling. If you succeed, for the cost of two motes, you can raise one of the patients physical attributes by one, as a training effect. Only one attribute can be raised per scarring session, up to the natural cap of the patient.
The knife has all the statistics of a usual knife (Core, page 366), except that it cannot be used as a throwing knife.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
In the manga Fist of the North Star, one the main antagonists* has an "ability" (implied to be a natural result of his incredible spiritual power and fighting prowess) that causes weak** attackers to suddenly perceive an endless wall of fists racing out from Raoh and right toward them as they move to attack. It doesn't cause any physical harm, and the character it's used against manages to resist the urge to back off and presses the attack (to his detriment).
Would it be reasonable to homebrew a Solar Charm (presumably based on either Martial Arts, Melee, or Presence) that mimics that effect? I'm not too good with crunch in general, but off the top of my head it sounds like an Illusion or Emotion effect (not Obvious though, given that only the victim perceives the "wall of fists") that activates when the user is attacked by a creature with an Essence score of 1/2 the user's or less, forcing them to abort their attack (and retreat, maybe?) unless they spend Willpower.
Does that sound balanced/in-theme, and if so, what should its prereqs be?
* Raoh, a deadly warlord who dubbed himself "Ken-Oh" - literally "King of Fists" - after his mastery of countless martial arts styles. The series in general has some definite Exalted vibes, and a lot of the villains are practically Exalts already.
Mind you, the titular martial art is about as balanced as Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style. Essentially, it's a bevy of instakill Shaping effects seasoned with UMI of various sorts & a handful of healing effects, to the point where it is openly stated as being the ultimate martial art. That it's directly associated with the Big Dipper constellation only furthers the sensation of it being an overpowered SMA.
** By comparison to Raoh, that is: we see it happen when a major secondary character - himself a master martial artist of great renown, and strong enough to obliterate entire packs of raiders with trivial ease - tries to confront Raoh.
Would it be reasonable to homebrew a Solar Charm (presumably based on either Martial Arts, Melee, or Presence) that mimics that effect? I'm not too good with crunch in general, but off the top of my head it sounds like an Illusion or Emotion effect (not Obvious though, given that only the victim perceives the "wall of fists") that activates when the user is attacked by a creature with an Essence score of 1/2 the user's or less, forcing them to abort their attack (and retreat, maybe?) unless they spend Willpower.
Does that sound balanced/in-theme, and if so, what should its prereqs be?
* Raoh, a deadly warlord who dubbed himself "Ken-Oh" - literally "King of Fists" - after his mastery of countless martial arts styles. The series in general has some definite Exalted vibes, and a lot of the villains are practically Exalts already.
Mind you, the titular martial art is about as balanced as Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style. Essentially, it's a bevy of instakill Shaping effects seasoned with UMI of various sorts & a handful of healing effects, to the point where it is openly stated as being the ultimate martial art. That it's directly associated with the Big Dipper constellation only furthers the sensation of it being an overpowered SMA.
** By comparison to Raoh, that is: we see it happen when a major secondary character - himself a master martial artist of great renown, and strong enough to obliterate entire packs of raiders with trivial ease - tries to confront Raoh.
That's basically the Dawn "I'm super scary" anima effect.
That's just a re-fluffing of the Dawn Anima.
edit:
Teacup ninja'd
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Continuing the FotNS thing, the various South Star styles are totally CMA, right? Has anybody ever bothered trying to convert any of the martial arts from that series into Exalted?
Salty
Shadow Cabal Assumptor Supreme
- Location
- Sun, Moon, Talia
- Pronouns
- I/Me
I'd actually say most of them are TMA. IIRC the most exotic thing is the whole Nanto Seiken "I poke holes in things with my fingers" schtick.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
I mean, there's also Nanto Suichoken[1], which lets you carve people to bits with your fingers.
Or Nanto Kokakuken[2], which lets you project blades of air from your fingertips to shred people from yards away.
Or Gento Koken[3], which is almost entirely based on throwing around ki lasers, barriers, and other blatantly supernatural shit.
Honorable mention goes to Rakan Nioh Ken[4], which lets you crush peoples' bones and knock down walls with the wind from your punches. There's also some really crazy shit like the guy who can throw around fireballs and also become fire or the other guy who uses "South Star Dark Bell Fist" to mind control an entire town of people, make disloyal servants explode from at least a hundred yards away, and even reanimate the corpses of the fallen to serve him, but those are probably better represented as a Fire Aspect and a Sorcerer, respectively[5].
Terrestrial Martial Arts are more like the Nishin Furaiken[6] or Uighur's Taizan-Ryu Sojo Ben[7].
[1] "South Star Waterfowl Fist"
[2] "South Star Crimson Crane Fist"
[3] "First Star Royal Fist" - I haven't reached the point where this shows up in the anime, but it's still pretty bonkers-sounding.
[4] "Arhat Deva Fist"; as described, it seems like a sort of Wild Berserker style, taking the idea of "I'm a crazy-strong fighter who flips out and berserks all over the place" and then applying a symbolic analogy to storms, gales, and other violent & uncontrolled phenomena, so that your wild blows throw off earth-shattering gusts of wind. It may also have gateway Charms that incentivize recklessness and/or brutality, given its dark reputation.
[5] Especially since most of the powers of "South Star Dark Bell Fist" need time and chanting to activate & are linked to the ringing of a giant church bell; you could totally represent that under @EarthScorpion's Sorcery rewrite as an Artifact he's anchoring spells to, with a couple more anchored to his Backing (Shin), Followers (Violent Thugs), and Influence (Feared Local Despot).
[6] "Twin God Wind-and-Thunder Fist" - it's a two-person martial art where the practitioners string razor-sharp wires between each others' fingers and then flash-step around the battlefield, dicing anyone who gets caught between them.
[7] "Taishan-Style Twin Streak Whip", which is literally dual-wielding whips, and is based on locking down an opponent's combat mobility and then wearing them down with flurries.
- Location
- Ottawa
In 2e, maybe. Not in 3e. Dunno about 1e.
Salty
Shadow Cabal Assumptor Supreme
- Location
- Sun, Moon, Talia
- Pronouns
- I/Me
Fair enough. Most of my initial point is that for all that people dismiss TMA, it's important to remember that it's still blatantly magical martial arts Charms.
Now, I'd attribute this to 2e's MA bloat and a severe lack of criteria that distinguish TMA from CMA on any level other than that of power, but that's another topic entirely.